This paper is concerned with the control design problem for a class of nonlinear systems with the state time-varying time delays and nonsymmetric dead zone. The problem addressed is to design adaptive controllers that guarantee the exact tracking of a given reference signal. Two continuous robust adaptive control schemes are proposed. A positive nonlinear control gain function, which is not required to satisfy an inequality but is expressed explicitly, is carefully constructed and is used in the control law and adaptive law. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed design method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.